As others have suggested, doing this with OO is going to have a cost. One way of avoiding that yet preserving the modularization and ability to have multiple bitstreams would be to generate a closure. Pseudo-code: 
sub BitStream::make_bitstream {
   my $filename = shift;
   open my $fh, ... or return
   my $buf='';
   return sub {

      # if a buffer is available, use it
      my $ret_str = substr($buf, 0, (defined($_[0]) ? $_[0] : 1), '');

      # fill buffer if request may not have been satisfied
      if (!length($buf)) {
         my $need = (defined($_[0]) ? $_[0] : 1) - length($ret_Str);
         return $ret_str if !$need;
         read from $fh and unpack into $buf
         $ret_str .= substr($buf, 0, $need, '');
      }
      $ret_str;
   }
}

#example
package main;

$get_bits = BitStream::make_bitstring("foo.dat") or die "open failure:
+ $!";
$onebit = $get_bits->();
$twobits = $get_bits->(2);

[download]
It's not clear whether you want failure to read the desired number of bits would be a fatal error or just return what was available.

!defined($_[0])||$_[0] may be faster than the ?: way; if you are that concerned, you may want to benchmark it (or just use C :).

Update: - $ret_str was supposed to be - length($ret_str)

In reply to Re: BitStream revisited by ysth
in thread BitStream revisited by spurperl

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